This week, third-year students presented their course projects in Electronic Product Development at Shenkar's Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering. Advising the students were Gal Liviu from the Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering and Daniel Leibowitz from the Department of Industrial Design.

Each year, the course tackles a different theme. This year, the students were asked to develop products related to music.

Here are this year's projects:

Phantom | Karni Galon, Omer Ofir, Carmel Shealtiel, Roy Tzvi

To play the Phantom, one does not need to be a musician or even to know how to play an instrument. The Phantom is fully customizable!

To get started, users just sit comfortably with the Phantom in their lap. The Phantom produces different sounds when they move their hand over it, depending on the distance of the hand from the device.

The Phantom is an electronic device equipped with a distance sensor. The device plays sounds that vary based on the sensor readings. The sounds are dynamic and programmable, so users can create their own personal instrument. Each player can set the length, type, and style of each sound by uploading MP3 files into the memory card that comes with the device.

The Phantom

The Phantom has an Arduino Mega microcontroller, an MP3 module with a memory card, 6 SONAR sensors to determine the distance of the player's hands, speakers, and an LED light.

The sensors detect the player's movements, and the device plays sounds accordingly. Each sensor activates at least two sounds, based on how far the player's hand is from the Phantom. The sounds can be customized to create different musical genres.

Playmove: a shoe that plays music based on the wearer's walking or running cadence | Shanel Azulay, Mahaa Cnaana, Tomer Yehi-El Misk, Anastasia Sharonin

These shoes are equipped with a sensor that measures the time between the wearer's steps. Boasting an innovative design, the shoe not only looks good: it's comfortable and unisex too.

Every time you put on the shoe and start walking or running, the speaker plays music that matches the rhythm of your steps.

The Playmove team

Green Sound | Omer Attias and David Hadad

The milk carton is the most common packaging for milk—much more convenient than plastic milk bags. The problem is cartons are much harder to recycle. And they're used for more than just milk—many products have similar packaging. This project is a digital kit that, when mounted on a milk carton, transforms it into a musical instrument. The carton serves as the instrument's soundbox. 

Users can play any musical note by blowing into the instrument. With its own power source, the device is fully mobile.

We chose to work with milk cartons to raise awareness and encourage people to reuse unrecyclable packaging.

The Green Sound team

Feel the Bit | Liav Eliyahu, Dorian Panker

A hoodie with sensors and buttons connected to an Arduino controller. Each button produces a different note played to a beat.

The Feel the Bit team

Photos by: Achikam Ben Yosef